I have been teaching philosophy at the university level for twenty years now. I love teaching, and I've had some lovely recognition as a teacher, including a university-wide teaching award two or three years ago. So you might think I'd be confident as a teacher, that I'd leap out of bed and skip over to my classroom with a light heart on each teaching day. You would be wrong.
Even after two decades of teaching, I always wake up on teaching days with a sick feeling in my stomach. It feels impossible ever to be prepared for teaching, because the classroom experience has so much in common with improv theater: even in a large class, it isn't just a lecture, or a performance; there is always interaction with an audience, and with an unpredictable audience, one that can ask ANYTHING or say ANYTHING, and then it's up to the teacher - that is to say, to ME - to incorporate that into the shape of the hour somehow. And what if the audience says NOTHING? What if I call out, "Give me the name of a town! Now give me a career - policeman, fireman? Now give me a common household object!" - and nobody says anything? If they just sit there in stony silence and I have to create the whole improv routine out of nothing at all?
It doesn't help that for some terrible reason I don't seem able to prepare for class until the day of the class itself. As soon as I do prepare, I start to feel better: surely they will have lots to say about THIS! But I don't seem able to do this the day before. And I always feel better once I actually teach the first class of the day, vastly better: oh, I DO remember how to teach, I do, I do! But this semester, I'm not teaching until the afternoon: my class is from 12:40-2:10 (note: an hour and a half is a LOT of time to fill). So I have all morning to fret and fidget, which is what I'm doing right now.
Okay, I'm off to prepare. My particular bunch of students this semester is wonderfully lively and engaged, so I know class today will be good. Or at least I hope it will be. But what if - no, don't think that way! Go off and actually prepare the darned thing! Go!
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Episodes of Happiness
I used to have the life strategy of planning out five episodes of happiness for myself each day. The episodes could be small. Small ones are often the best. But they had to be reliable/guaranteed episodes of happiness. For example, sometimes teaching my class is the highlight of my day; other times, I leave class feeling that I have to wear a bag over my head for the rest of my life. So I never put "teaching my class" on the happiness schedule; if it ends up being an episode of happiness, that's a lucky extra in my day. Favorite items included: 1) lingering in bed for an extra ten minutes in the morning, without guilt, luxuriating under the covers; 2) walking a few extra blocks before I got on the Skip to go work; 3) having lunch with a friend; 4) reading a good book for half an hour before going to bed; and 5) ??? It was always fun to try to come up with that fifth episode.
Since I've come to Indiana, I've fallen out of this habit. Every day here is one long unbroken stretch of happiness. But lately I've decided that I missed the practice of distinguishing and honoring distinct little bits of happiness. So sometimes now I reckon up my episodes of happiness after the fact.
Here is my list from yesterday:
1) reading Honor Scholar submissions in my comfy bed in the early morning with my mug of hot chocolate
2) walking up and down Seminary Street as it was beginning to be light
3) oatmeal at the Hub with lots of brown sugar and raisins
4) my class - really good!
5) session one of my Cheshire Calhoun reading group, all of us sitting by the Prindle Institute fireplace discussing Cheshire's essay, "Changing One's Heart" - extremely fun!
6) talking on the phone for a long time to my dear Colorado friend Diane
That makes six, not five. But there is nothing wrong with having an additional episode of happiness, or for that matter, two or three or four.
Since I've come to Indiana, I've fallen out of this habit. Every day here is one long unbroken stretch of happiness. But lately I've decided that I missed the practice of distinguishing and honoring distinct little bits of happiness. So sometimes now I reckon up my episodes of happiness after the fact.
Here is my list from yesterday:
1) reading Honor Scholar submissions in my comfy bed in the early morning with my mug of hot chocolate
2) walking up and down Seminary Street as it was beginning to be light
3) oatmeal at the Hub with lots of brown sugar and raisins
4) my class - really good!
5) session one of my Cheshire Calhoun reading group, all of us sitting by the Prindle Institute fireplace discussing Cheshire's essay, "Changing One's Heart" - extremely fun!
6) talking on the phone for a long time to my dear Colorado friend Diane
That makes six, not five. But there is nothing wrong with having an additional episode of happiness, or for that matter, two or three or four.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Oatmeal
For those of you interested in what I ate for breakfast today, today I tried out a NEW BREAKFAST PLAN. The Blue Door Cafe has beautiful hot chocolate, delicious French toast, and perfectly cooked omelets, but their oatmeal, I regret to inform you, is of the instant variety that comes in those little packages; they just don't have enough early morning traffic to justify having a big pot of oatmeal sitting on top of the stove.
So today I took an early morning walk up Seminary Street (my street) from the un-fancy end where I live to the very fancy end where the president of the university lives; then I walked back on Anderson Street, where I may live next year (I've looked at a beautiful century-old house there that would be available when its owner departs for her sabbatical year in Germany). I ended up at the Hub (student cafeteria/food court) in the student union on campus, where they offer have a big pot of oatmeal, as well as a big pot of cream of wheat.
I fixed my bowl by layering it: first a bunch of oatmeal, then a layer of brown sugar and raisins; then repeat. The final effect was like eating a bowl of molten oatmeal raisin cookies. Cost: $1.70.
I still love the Blue Door beyond all reckoning, but this made a nice change on a gray morning. It's good to expand one's culinary horizons, don't you think?
So today I took an early morning walk up Seminary Street (my street) from the un-fancy end where I live to the very fancy end where the president of the university lives; then I walked back on Anderson Street, where I may live next year (I've looked at a beautiful century-old house there that would be available when its owner departs for her sabbatical year in Germany). I ended up at the Hub (student cafeteria/food court) in the student union on campus, where they offer have a big pot of oatmeal, as well as a big pot of cream of wheat.
I fixed my bowl by layering it: first a bunch of oatmeal, then a layer of brown sugar and raisins; then repeat. The final effect was like eating a bowl of molten oatmeal raisin cookies. Cost: $1.70.
I still love the Blue Door beyond all reckoning, but this made a nice change on a gray morning. It's good to expand one's culinary horizons, don't you think?
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Fourteen in One Blow
Yesterday I heard FOURTEEN different talks in the Grimm Legacy Fairy Tale Symposium at Harvard. I sat on a comfy couch in the back of the ornate room at the Barker Humanities Center, choosing coziness over a clearer sight line to the podium. Sitting on the couch with me were a children's librarian from Rhode Island and a professor of Portuguese at Harvard who remembers all the fairy tales told her by her grandmother as she was growing up in the Azores Islands.
A few highlights from the long, extremely full day:
Maria Tatar, brilliant scholar who chairs the Program in Folklore and Mythology at Harvard, gave exquisite opening remarks. I tried to write down all her best sentences, such as this one: "Stories make the human world, and they also make the world human." She talked about Gretel as a trickster heroine who spawned a legacy of surprisingly strong girls, such as Pippi Longstocking. She quoted James Baldwin: stories are "the only light we've got in the darkness."
David Rice, recent Harvard graduate who is just back from a year in Berlin working on his novel (now I want to have a year in Berlin working on MY novel!), spoke eloquently of the distinction between the "forest" - a literal, real place that can be mapped - and the "woods" - the landscape of imagination, a subjective state of feelings. He distinguished fairy tales, where readers sign an implicit contract to enter a world of magic, and literature of the fantastic, where magic breaks in unbidden.
Ariane Mandell, completing a degree at Harvard Divinity School as she also completes her first novel, talked about the role of tears in the Grimm stories, first invoking ancient Jewish wisdom that tears have the power to get God's attention when nothing else will. The miller's daughter's tears bring the aid of Rumplestiltskin; then her tears get him to grant her a reprieve on her promise to give him her firstborn child. Cinderella waters the tree over her mother's grave with her tears, thus bringing her the magical assistance she needs to go to the ball. To weep is to hope, Ariane said; people with serious enough clinical depression no longer bother to weep.
Perri Klass, pediatrician and author of numerous essays on literature, distilled a century of childrearing advice from leading physicians on whether or not parents should read fairy tales to children. Dr. Spock said no: the world has enough cruelty in it without gratuitously introducing more. But he is in the minority. Bruno Bettelheim said that when children request the same story over and over again it is because there is some message that they want the PARENT to get!
Animator Ruth Lingford showed her hauntingly beautiful film of the lesser-known Grimm tale, "Death and the Mother." Jerry Griswold brought the house down with hilarious musings about the different endings of "Beauty and the Beast," focusing on Beauty's bewilderment when her beast is suddenly replaced by some handsome stranger: "Who the heck is THAT?" John Cech looked at Sendak's illustrations of Grimm; Michael Patrick Hearn looked at the Cruikshank illustrations from the first English-language edition of the tales. Claudia Schabe showed clips from socialist retellings of the tales in East German films of the Cold War era. And more!
I was too tired to go out to explore Cambridge in the evening. I waltzed back to my bed-and-breakfast and got in bed and read. I now have a couple of hours before I have to head to Logan for my flight home. Should I walk around Cambridge in this sunny but very cold morning? Or stay curled up at this sweet Irving Street b&b? Or maybe a little bit of both?
A few highlights from the long, extremely full day:
Maria Tatar, brilliant scholar who chairs the Program in Folklore and Mythology at Harvard, gave exquisite opening remarks. I tried to write down all her best sentences, such as this one: "Stories make the human world, and they also make the world human." She talked about Gretel as a trickster heroine who spawned a legacy of surprisingly strong girls, such as Pippi Longstocking. She quoted James Baldwin: stories are "the only light we've got in the darkness."
David Rice, recent Harvard graduate who is just back from a year in Berlin working on his novel (now I want to have a year in Berlin working on MY novel!), spoke eloquently of the distinction between the "forest" - a literal, real place that can be mapped - and the "woods" - the landscape of imagination, a subjective state of feelings. He distinguished fairy tales, where readers sign an implicit contract to enter a world of magic, and literature of the fantastic, where magic breaks in unbidden.
Ariane Mandell, completing a degree at Harvard Divinity School as she also completes her first novel, talked about the role of tears in the Grimm stories, first invoking ancient Jewish wisdom that tears have the power to get God's attention when nothing else will. The miller's daughter's tears bring the aid of Rumplestiltskin; then her tears get him to grant her a reprieve on her promise to give him her firstborn child. Cinderella waters the tree over her mother's grave with her tears, thus bringing her the magical assistance she needs to go to the ball. To weep is to hope, Ariane said; people with serious enough clinical depression no longer bother to weep.
Perri Klass, pediatrician and author of numerous essays on literature, distilled a century of childrearing advice from leading physicians on whether or not parents should read fairy tales to children. Dr. Spock said no: the world has enough cruelty in it without gratuitously introducing more. But he is in the minority. Bruno Bettelheim said that when children request the same story over and over again it is because there is some message that they want the PARENT to get!
Animator Ruth Lingford showed her hauntingly beautiful film of the lesser-known Grimm tale, "Death and the Mother." Jerry Griswold brought the house down with hilarious musings about the different endings of "Beauty and the Beast," focusing on Beauty's bewilderment when her beast is suddenly replaced by some handsome stranger: "Who the heck is THAT?" John Cech looked at Sendak's illustrations of Grimm; Michael Patrick Hearn looked at the Cruikshank illustrations from the first English-language edition of the tales. Claudia Schabe showed clips from socialist retellings of the tales in East German films of the Cold War era. And more!
I was too tired to go out to explore Cambridge in the evening. I waltzed back to my bed-and-breakfast and got in bed and read. I now have a couple of hours before I have to head to Logan for my flight home. Should I walk around Cambridge in this sunny but very cold morning? Or stay curled up at this sweet Irving Street b&b? Or maybe a little bit of both?
Friday, February 3, 2012
So Glad I Came
Greetings from Cambridge!
I've been trying to remember the last time I was in Boston or Cambridge; I think it might be at least twenty years ago. We came here once as a family when Christopher was a toddler, before Gregory was even born. I know I came here for the APA (American Philosophical Association) convention the year I went on the job market. Those are the only two times I can remember. But once upon a time, when I was an undergraduate at Wellesley, taking a good number of classes at MIT through the Wellesley/MIT exchange program, I rode the bus into Cambridge several times a week for a period of years.
Now I'm back for a blissful weekend attending the symposium Harvard has organized to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the publication of the Grimm Brothers' fairy tales. I flew in this morning and got from Logan Airport to Harvard Square for a $2 Charlie ticket on the T (the ticket presumably named for the song "Charlie of the MTA"). I easily found the charming bed-and-breakfast on Irving Street, near the Harvard campus, where I had reserved my room for these two nights. My room is two flights up, tiny, with a shared bath: exactly what I wanted. A computer is available in the parlor; that's where I'm typing this now. Each room is stocked with books to read (which guests are welcome to take); the parlor also has magazines, including The New Yorker, and newspapers, including the New York Times.
For the next couple of hours I wandered around Cambridge, spending most of my time in the aisles of the Harvard Book Store (not the university bookstore, which is the Harvard Coop). I bought three books: Anne Sexton's book of fairy tale poems, Transformations; Diderot's Rameau's Nephew; and Nancy Mitford's Voltaire in Love. At first I thought the bookstore's relatively small section of children's books boasted no Claudia Mills titles. But then I looked again: two copies of the newly released paperback for Being Teddy Roosevelt - hooray! I asked the guy at the bookstore for a lunch recommendation and he directed me to a place called Darwin's on Mt. Auburn Street: truly excellent sandwiches, plus comfy armchairs for starting in on reading Diderot.
Then it was time for the symposium to begin, in the Barker Center for the Humanities. Two talks today: a presentation on the development of the SurLaLune fairy tale website that contains thousands of versions (and classic illustrations) for dozens of fairy tales - and the keynote address by prominent fairy tale scholar Jack Zipes on the Grimm brothers' legacy in contemporary Germany. Tomorrow there will be talks all day, starting at 8:45 and going until 6:30.
Right now I'm eating moist chunks of apple cake provided by the bed-and-breakfast - and then I'll curl up in my single bed and read some more, probably fairy tale poetry tonight. I'm so glad I came!
I've been trying to remember the last time I was in Boston or Cambridge; I think it might be at least twenty years ago. We came here once as a family when Christopher was a toddler, before Gregory was even born. I know I came here for the APA (American Philosophical Association) convention the year I went on the job market. Those are the only two times I can remember. But once upon a time, when I was an undergraduate at Wellesley, taking a good number of classes at MIT through the Wellesley/MIT exchange program, I rode the bus into Cambridge several times a week for a period of years.
Now I'm back for a blissful weekend attending the symposium Harvard has organized to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the publication of the Grimm Brothers' fairy tales. I flew in this morning and got from Logan Airport to Harvard Square for a $2 Charlie ticket on the T (the ticket presumably named for the song "Charlie of the MTA"). I easily found the charming bed-and-breakfast on Irving Street, near the Harvard campus, where I had reserved my room for these two nights. My room is two flights up, tiny, with a shared bath: exactly what I wanted. A computer is available in the parlor; that's where I'm typing this now. Each room is stocked with books to read (which guests are welcome to take); the parlor also has magazines, including The New Yorker, and newspapers, including the New York Times.
For the next couple of hours I wandered around Cambridge, spending most of my time in the aisles of the Harvard Book Store (not the university bookstore, which is the Harvard Coop). I bought three books: Anne Sexton's book of fairy tale poems, Transformations; Diderot's Rameau's Nephew; and Nancy Mitford's Voltaire in Love. At first I thought the bookstore's relatively small section of children's books boasted no Claudia Mills titles. But then I looked again: two copies of the newly released paperback for Being Teddy Roosevelt - hooray! I asked the guy at the bookstore for a lunch recommendation and he directed me to a place called Darwin's on Mt. Auburn Street: truly excellent sandwiches, plus comfy armchairs for starting in on reading Diderot.
Then it was time for the symposium to begin, in the Barker Center for the Humanities. Two talks today: a presentation on the development of the SurLaLune fairy tale website that contains thousands of versions (and classic illustrations) for dozens of fairy tales - and the keynote address by prominent fairy tale scholar Jack Zipes on the Grimm brothers' legacy in contemporary Germany. Tomorrow there will be talks all day, starting at 8:45 and going until 6:30.
Right now I'm eating moist chunks of apple cake provided by the bed-and-breakfast - and then I'll curl up in my single bed and read some more, probably fairy tale poetry tonight. I'm so glad I came!
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Windshield Wiper Woes
In Colorado, precipitation in the winter comes in the form of snow. Any wet stuff that falls out of the sky is going to be white fluffy stuff. Not so in Indiana, where winter can bring rain, or snow, or, worst of all, freezing rain. I heard that the community of Greencastle was paralyzed for a week last winter, the university closed and classes canceled, because of an ice storm that left intractable ice covering everything.
I had my first encounter with the freezing rain of Indiana a week or so ago. I left the play I had attended on campus (shamefully having driven the very short distance to get there because of the inclement weather) to find my car entirely encased in a thick covering of ice. I turned on the heater and front and rear defrosters, as I chipped away at that ice for all I was worth, but I couldn't make a single dent in it. Finally, the guy scraping and chipping at his windshield behind me came over to show me how to proceed: just get one TINY little crack in the ice anywhere, and then use that to gain purchase on the rest. I finally did clear enough of the windshield to be able to drive home. But in the process I made the mistake of trying to force my windshield wipers to do their share in the ice removal ordeal.
The poor wipers couldn't do it any more than I could. The next day, one of them refused to go altogether, its heart having given out under the unfair strain. Or so I thought. But then, after a few days of rest, I tried the wipers again, and the ailing wiper made a miraculous recovery and wiped along merrily with his brother as if nothing had happened. But then, alas, when I tried the same experiment again on the following day, that wiper had a relapse and ground to a halt halfway up the windshield. His brother kept on going, the two got entangled, and the healthy wiper was now mangled: fatally injured!
So it was time to take my little Chevy Aveo to York Chevrolet. Guess what I paid for the repair? $9.36, for the replacement wiper. The kindly manager tightened the originally ailing wiper and replaced the subsequently destroyed wiper for free. It all took less than ten minutes. So thank you, York Chevrolet! But next time there is an ice storm, I'm going to treat my windshield wipers with more loving kindness, that is for sure. When it comes to windshield wipers, this Colorado girl turned Indiana girl is sadder and wiser now.
I had my first encounter with the freezing rain of Indiana a week or so ago. I left the play I had attended on campus (shamefully having driven the very short distance to get there because of the inclement weather) to find my car entirely encased in a thick covering of ice. I turned on the heater and front and rear defrosters, as I chipped away at that ice for all I was worth, but I couldn't make a single dent in it. Finally, the guy scraping and chipping at his windshield behind me came over to show me how to proceed: just get one TINY little crack in the ice anywhere, and then use that to gain purchase on the rest. I finally did clear enough of the windshield to be able to drive home. But in the process I made the mistake of trying to force my windshield wipers to do their share in the ice removal ordeal.
The poor wipers couldn't do it any more than I could. The next day, one of them refused to go altogether, its heart having given out under the unfair strain. Or so I thought. But then, after a few days of rest, I tried the wipers again, and the ailing wiper made a miraculous recovery and wiped along merrily with his brother as if nothing had happened. But then, alas, when I tried the same experiment again on the following day, that wiper had a relapse and ground to a halt halfway up the windshield. His brother kept on going, the two got entangled, and the healthy wiper was now mangled: fatally injured!
So it was time to take my little Chevy Aveo to York Chevrolet. Guess what I paid for the repair? $9.36, for the replacement wiper. The kindly manager tightened the originally ailing wiper and replaced the subsequently destroyed wiper for free. It all took less than ten minutes. So thank you, York Chevrolet! But next time there is an ice storm, I'm going to treat my windshield wipers with more loving kindness, that is for sure. When it comes to windshield wipers, this Colorado girl turned Indiana girl is sadder and wiser now.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Fairy Tale Adventure
This is going to be a year filled with fairy tales for me.
I've been working on what I hope will be a series of young chapter books that have a fairy tale theme. The children in second grade at Grimm Elementary are studying fairy tales; each child is assigned a fairy tale of his or her own, charged with retelling it in some new and different way. But as the children work on their retellings, they find that their own lives start to parallel their fairy tale in uncanny and illuminating ways. So far I've written Priscilla and the Pea, and now I'm working on Jeremy and the Beanstalk, while waiting to hear from the publishing powers-that-be if the idea is a go.
I'm also writing a poem every Thursday to share with two poet friends from last year's poetry retreat, and I've decided to write fairy tale poems, as poems of doomed love are not to my taste this year. I want to write them in all different forms: sonnet, pantoum, sestina, haiku.
I'm going to be teaching children's literature in the English Department here at DePauw this fall, and of course we'll cover fairy tales.
So when I saw that Harvard is hosting a one-day extravaganza this weekend to celebrate the two-hundredth anniversary of the publication of the Grimm Brothers' collection of fairy tales, I thought, maybe I should go to this. And so I am. I'm flying on miles, I'm staying at a darling bed-and-breakfast right off Harvard Square, and I'll be rubbing shoulders with all the greats of the world of fairy tales, Jack Zipes, Maria Tatar, Jerry Griswold, and so many others, at the Harvard symposium for Grimm Legacies.
Land of fairy tales: Here I come.
I've been working on what I hope will be a series of young chapter books that have a fairy tale theme. The children in second grade at Grimm Elementary are studying fairy tales; each child is assigned a fairy tale of his or her own, charged with retelling it in some new and different way. But as the children work on their retellings, they find that their own lives start to parallel their fairy tale in uncanny and illuminating ways. So far I've written Priscilla and the Pea, and now I'm working on Jeremy and the Beanstalk, while waiting to hear from the publishing powers-that-be if the idea is a go.
I'm also writing a poem every Thursday to share with two poet friends from last year's poetry retreat, and I've decided to write fairy tale poems, as poems of doomed love are not to my taste this year. I want to write them in all different forms: sonnet, pantoum, sestina, haiku.
I'm going to be teaching children's literature in the English Department here at DePauw this fall, and of course we'll cover fairy tales.
So when I saw that Harvard is hosting a one-day extravaganza this weekend to celebrate the two-hundredth anniversary of the publication of the Grimm Brothers' collection of fairy tales, I thought, maybe I should go to this. And so I am. I'm flying on miles, I'm staying at a darling bed-and-breakfast right off Harvard Square, and I'll be rubbing shoulders with all the greats of the world of fairy tales, Jack Zipes, Maria Tatar, Jerry Griswold, and so many others, at the Harvard symposium for Grimm Legacies.
Land of fairy tales: Here I come.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
